September in interior Alaska. One of my favorite months here. Fall color, the sound and sights of the cranes and geese taking wing for their long flight south to their winter refuges in the lo
wer 48. The bugs are gone and so are most of the tourists. Nights are cool and long enough for the Northern Lights to show when skies clear. A month of rapid change here, by month's end the trees will be bare, and a few snow flakes will be falling on the cold, semi-frozen ground. Enjoy it while it lasts!Unfortunately there is one day this month that is more difficult to enjoy than the others. We all know what day that is. However, there is another 9/11 worth studying, one that brought tragedy, death, and destruction to thousands of people on another continent, in the year 1973. It was followed by many more years of savage political repression when thousands more lost their lives, many preceded by incomprehensible torture. The continent was South America, and the country was Chile.
A country not frequented or much thought of by many Americans at the time. But changes were taking place in that country in the late 1960s. A left-wing government, led by Salvador Allende, was elected in 1970, in free and fair elections. Their government began to implement measures to try and help alleviate the massive poverty present then, by nationalizing certain industrial concerns, amongst other things. The U.S. government even before his election was already interfering in the internal affairs of Chile, and after Allende's election, these processes were ramped up by the Nixon administration. The three years from 1970-73 in that country were very turbulent, in no small part due to active measures planned and financed from Washington D.C. , at the behest of various U.S. corporate interests. Anaconda Mining, ITT, and many others.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Chile%20Coup_USHand.html
http://www.namebase.org/chile.html
When right-wing elements of the Chilean military, headed by General Augusto Pinochet, finally were able to implement their coup, on 11 September, 1973, they began with aerial bombardment of the Presidential Palace in Santiago. Then Pinochet's men swarmed through the city, seizing key sites, and invading the Presidential Palace. Allende's bodyguards put up a fierce fight, but to no avail, they were outnumbered and outgunned. When Allende knew his time was coming to an end, he gave a moving last speech to the nation:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende%27s_Last_Speech
He then shot himself in the head, not wanting to be captured alive by Pinochet's troops.
Thousands of Allende supporters and "suspected leftists" were rounded up and put in the National Stadium in downtown Santiago on that and ensuing days. Over the next several months, they were all "processed" and most were never seen again. Pinochet's absolute rule of Chile and his fascist reign of terror continued in that poor country until 1990.
When I lived in Missoula, MT, sometime around 1996 or 1997, an interesting thing happened. Overnight, someone had stencil-painted a "Walk of Shame" on the sidewalk on the Higgins Street Bridge. The main bridge crossing the Clark Fork River from the University of Montana and residential districts, to downtown. It was a listing of American military interventions in and governmental subversions of different countries, from 1898 to the present. It was a very long list, I don't even remember most of them, though a few stood out. Specifically, Iran 1953, which was aided by the CIA because the current freely elected government was planning on nationalizing the oilfields in their country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d
Think how different the Middle East would be today if the popularly elected secular government of Mohammed Mossadeq overthrown then had remained. Instead the 25 year repressive rule of the Shah, beginning in 1954, supported by the U.S., directly lead to their fundamentalist Islamic Revolution in 1979, and was the inspiration for many other similar movements in the region.
I was last in Missoula in 2005, and the "Walk of Shame" was still there! Some of the countries listed on it I had heard of and understood what had happened, this country's role in. I then read a book written in 1930 by Brig.Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, called "War is a Racket".
http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221011878&sr=1-1
This amazing short book, written by the Marine Corps general, describes his experiences on military expeditions to Central and Latin American countries in the 1910s and 1920s in support of U.S. corporate and financial interests. He then listed all the industries directly benefitting from these wars and expeditions undertaken up to that time, and proposed solutions for the U.S. militarism that even then was plaguing the other countries of the western hemisphere. A sobering reading, made all the more by how relevant it still is, unfortunately, today.
I came across this article the other day.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/04-2
The U.S. has 761 active military installations in different countries! Our defense budget is greater than all the rest of the countries of the World combined, and eight times that of China's, the second largest spender. The illegal, immoral, and criminal invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq **, which posed no threat to this or any other country, only added to that. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, supposedly undertaken to apprehend the criminals who perpretated the attacks on this country seven years ago, still is no closer to it's stated goal, and seems to be spreading into Pakistan.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/09-1
With our government continuing actions like this, and threatening other countries that pose no threat to us, like Iran, and even Russia, how much longer will it be, before this country is attacked again? Maybe that's what the neo-fascists want who are in the current administration. War without end is good for corporate profits and the maintenance and expansion of their grip on power. In addition to allowing their stated goal of elimination of any socially-oriented governmental programs by bankrupting the country unless they are cut because of ever-increasing defense spending, which politicians are too afraid to reign in. Health care, Social Security, Education, etc.. Is this what we want? Do we want a country we can be proud of, that is a force for good here and in the rest of the World, like it could be, or one that is reviled throughout the World, a militarized police state, as we are becoming now. The choice is ours.
** Investigative Reporter Greg Palast, in his book, Armed Madhouse, after interviewing numerous U.S. governmental officials (posing as an oil industry researcher), and oil industry figures, states that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was undertaken, with Saudi Arabia's blessing.
http://www.amazon.com/Armed-Madhouse-Baghdad-Orleans-Sordid-Secrets/dp/0452288312/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221014040&sr=1-1
Not so much to gain direct control and ownership of Iraq's oil, but to eliminate Sadam Hussein's control of it, as he was causing too much instability in the pricing of oil by his manipulation of Iraq's production/export. In addition, for all the usual other benefits, raised oil prices for oil industry profit expansion, other military-industrial corporate profits, and rallying of the masses around the administration as they scapegoated Iraq for the 9/11 attacks.
